Roswell was a chimp in a weather balloon
by GroundPetrel
Summary: Recovering from the fleshreaver attack and waiting for the woman from the future to wake up, the ARC finds itself under attack from three fronts-the giant eagle that seems to have decided that humans are food, the unidentified, superhuman hostiles attacking the ARC itself, and the sudden revelation that one of their own is an assassin in disguise.


**Here it is. Epic showdown, Brits meet Americans, Doctor Who jokes galore, Lester going badass with Boss Rage, and April being psychotic. Enjoy. **

**Sorry for being late, school stuff and snow and no power for a couple of days—yeah, complicated. **

**Disclaimer of disclaimitude: Still don't own Primeval. Still wish I did. **

**This chapter is dedicated to the entire cast of Star Trek: Voyager, for working their butts off through seven seasons of poor scripts and repeated shafting, Sue-ifying, and stereotyping of the most interesting characters. That goes double for Jeri Ryan, who had to tolerate those catsuits of blatant sexual exploitation. And triple for Ethan Phillips, who got stuck playing the most annoying character ever. **

**Prologue: **

**New Zealand (Aatorea). 1006 AD. **

The eagle was surprised by the light.

This was new. Sun on the ground. Why sun on the ground? Crazy. Like preyfood, twolegs preyfood, flying like an eagle.

The eagle would not tolerate strange on her territory. She was the undisputed ruler of this patch of forest, about halfway up one of the land's many mountains. Preyfood twolegs feared her for her inch-long talons and lethal dives, twolegs too small for preyfood feared her for the same reason (although she wouldn't usually try to catch them, not enough meat on them unless she fancied a snack), and flying twolegs nopreyfood feared her sheer size. Smaller predators like giant harrier hawks that hunted the flying twolegs knew enough to stay out of her way; they were annoying but no threat, unlike that scrappy male eagle from the next territory over. He was…persistent.

The eagle was not happy. She swooped at the sun-on-the-ground, lowering her massive talons for a bone-shattering strike—and missed.

While her brain was still processing this impossibility (the light hadn't moved! It must have cheated!), she realized with an unhealthy start that she was somewhere else. Not home. Strange sounds, strange smells. Not home.

**Coedwig Gwydyr, Wales. 2015. **

Elaine Wilson, age 32, Assistant Director of Human Resources for the Wilkins Corporation, didn't know why her husband Fred had dragged her out to this forest in Wales for their anniversary, but she was certain that the reason was going to be a good one.

He'd been working out. Last year he never would've kept up with her on a hike like this—now, he was forging ahead excitedly.

"Come on, honey! You've just got to see the site I picked out!"

"Alright, just wait up for me, soldier!" Elaine laughed as she picked her way up a hill, rocks poking out of the forest floor.

"You're going to love this, the view is just spectacular, and the—what on earth is that?"

"What? What is it?" Elaine scrambled up beside Fred, and saw the…what _was _that?

"I have no idea. Maybe it's a mirage?"

"Then why is it moving? Some sort of plastic sculpture, to catch the sun?"

"Why would there be a sculpture out here? It's the middle of nowhere. And the sun's behind the clouds, anyway—there's no solar panels or power cords, and I don't hear a generator, so it can't be electric…"

"Come on, let's take a look!"

"Alright," chuckled Fred. Then the bird hit him in the back with an explosion of feathers and talons, carrying him off his feet and shattering his spine and ribcage through his backpack as he screamed with shock. Elaine shrieked.

**Part 1. **

**Anomaly Research Centre. **

"Where is it, Jess?"

"Wales. You'll need to take an aeroplane from Heathrow. Use the personnel transport."

"Right. Emily, with me. You four soldiers, come with us with a locking device and as many EMDs as you can carry. Connor, Abby, I want you to keep an eye on Becker and the…woman until Tanya gets here, then I need Abby and Tanya in the field. Keep your eyes out for more Americans in the field. Let's go!"

The soldiers, plus Matt and Emily, left in a veritable cavalcade of boots. Connor stood there for a moment.

"All right…"

Abby sighed shook her head.

"Come on, Connor, let's go feed Lester's mammoth and wait for Tanya."

"Alright. I've still got to do some analysis on that data from the Scotland anomaly. It looks like the locking device can stabilize a faultlining anomaly!"

"That's nice, honey. Menagerie. Now. Jess, call us if you need anything, alright?"

Jess, red-eyed and exhausted-looking, nodded without taking her eyes off of the ARC security feeds.

**ARC lobby. 30 minutes later. **

"_Freude, schöner Gottertrunken, Tochter aus Elysium…_"

April sang softly to herself as she approached the elevator. Beethoven. Always appropriate.

August was busy, so she'd have to solo this. Good. All the victims for her.

The secretary nodded as April flashed the ARC temporary ID badge. She still hadn't gotten a biometric ID, due to "unforeseen complications". Better to not let the prey see her altered biology.

There were two women in the elevator already. One a curvy but muscular brunette in a suit, and the other was a prim, nondescript blonde in a professionally gray skirt and blouse. The brunette reeked of floral perfume, nearly making April cough as she inhaled. The blonde had a touch of vanity makeup, obvious Botox, and too-tight clothes. Trying to look younger than she was. She was carrying a folder and clipboard. The brunette was young, early twenties, eager and extremely nervous, carrying a slim folder that could've been a résumé.

Interesting. Since when did the ARC interview prospective personnel on-site? The blonde had some business in the ARC, probably an inspector or something, and both were going straight to the ops level. That could be a complication.

The brunette was tense, licking her lips repeatedly and sweating visibly. Huh, that should've made her makeup run—unless she really was that naturally good-looking. Lucky little…

The elevator bell _ding_ed, interrupting April's casual train of thought. She was, naturally, the first out of the elevator, followed by the blonde, both of them trying to politely escape the nauseating perfume. The blonde went for Lester's office; the man himself was on a phone call. The brunette slipped off down a side corridor—probably off to some appointment.

April took a moment to hang up her coat on the new rack by the elevator before heading in to kill. It was a nice coat, not to mention wickedly hot over her clothes and bodysuit.

Jess was at the ADD as April approached. Connor and Abby were just turning away from the array.

"Alright, the creatures are fed, we're going to head to the infirmary and check on the patients, and I'll be sure to send someone to check the video cameras. You stay here and see if you can reboot them remotely—oh, hello, Tanya!"

"Good morning, Prey," said April in her normal, American accent, extending her right armblade. She allowed the baselines one moment of shock as they saw the blade slide out from her loose fist, and then she rammed it into Temple's gut, just below the diaphragm.

**Lester's office. **

"Yuri! How are things? Still hooked on cheap vodka?"

"Well tie me to a rock and drop me in the Volga, if it isn't James Lester! How have you been, you old card shark?"

"Oh, you know, balls, dinners, arrogant private investors, saving the world while enduring budget cuts and amateur staff—you know how it is, old friend."

"I heard. It's been the same for me, unfortunately—President Putin is a dreadful bore, and I do mean dreadful. Thanks for keeping your men out of our territory during the Convergence event; our operatives prefer…privacy."

"I'd been meaning to talk to you about that. I thought that your team was decommissioned after that tyrannosaur incident?"

"No, just upgraded in security clearance. It's a long story."

"Interesting. Your woman didn't say anything about that."

"Our woman? Who?" Yuri sounded genuinely confused. And worried.

"You don't know her? Odd, she's pretty unforgettable. Her name's Tatiana Sholoshkova, and she just walked in to Ops if you want to talk to her."

Yuri's voice was deadly serious.

"James. Listen to me very carefully. Your life is in danger. What does she look like?"

Lester looked at the Ministry woman standing patiently outside his door and waving to him, and at the blonde "Russian" walking towards his agents.

Oh, bollocks.

"Blonde, fit, good-looking, about one point six meters, moves her arms oddly…"

Yuri swore in Russian."Lester, she's an assassin, she's not human, you have to get out of there right now!"

Lester grabbed his shiny new UZI from its drawer in his desk, burst out the door of his office, and grabbed the screaming Ministry woman as "Tanya" stabbed Connor with a bluish sword blade that slid out of her hand and tossed him aside with a contemptuous flick of her wrist.

_So that was why she didn't rotate her wrists. Implanted, extendable weaponry. And that's how she can run so fast; she's stronger than she should be, stands to reason she's faster, too…_

"So sorry about this, ma'am, I swear that this isn't normal protocol, let's just run down this corridor and get to the car park, shall we? Abby, Jess, get down!"

Say what you would about the ARC's amateur team, they were competent and knew when to duck. They were on the ground before Lester pulled the trigger. "Tanya" didn't even miss a beat as Lester's gun sprayed metallic death at her immediate vicinity (Lester never had learned how to aim). She simply stood and turned partway, her clothes shredding on her body, revealing a jet-black Kevlar bodysuit underneath. She didn't even move at the impacts, just standing there half-turned, smirking at Lester, her too-perfect white teeth glittering like wet plastic.

One of the bullets hit her in the forehead.

It deflected with a muted ringing sound, a bluish glint visible in the dim lights before blood filled the furrow and began to clot. The killer snarled with fury, spitting out her teeth—no, dentures, her teeth were the bluish metal triangles that the plastic had hidden all this time—as Lester's gun clicked empty.

Oh, _shit_.

Off-handedly, the part of Lester's brain that was not trying to rapidly evacuate his bowels thought: Metal _teeth_? Someone watched too much James Bond the day they gave that woman those implants.

The assassin stalked forward, her left armblade sliding out to match its bloody twin, and smiled. It wasn't a nice smile at all. The Ministry woman was still screaming. Damn, but that was annoying.

Then, of all things, the lift bell _ding_ed behind him. And the door opened, revealing a gangly, black-haired man and a wiry brunette, both in black bodysuits and armed to the teeth.

"Hey, April!" said the man, raising a disturbingly large EMD-like weapon as the woman did so on Lester's other side. "This is for Foss, you bitch!"

The blue electric pulses took the assassin in the chest, sending her flying twenty feet back into the ADD, eliciting a shriek from Jess, who was cowering sensibly behind the array.

Then the not-Tanya, the assassin, flipped back to her feet with gymnastic grace, and smiled like the Cheshire Cat. And James Lester knew damn well that this was going to be his worst day ever.

**ARC infirmary. **

Captain Hilary Becker woke up to a dry mouth, a throbbing ache in his leg, and a wicked hangover. Or at least something very much like a hangover.

His brain, trained by years of Special Forces work and a few more years of life in the insane asylum that was the ARC on a good day, was operating on autopilot, grabbing for his gun, registering that he was bound, and reviewing his situation before he was even aware of why he'd woken up.

Gunfire. Automatic, by the sound of it. Lester's UZI. And screams.

Shit. That's right, he'd been injured—hit his head, probably mildly concussed, and scraped his leg on the creature's teeth. Tanya—no, April. It finally made sense; that was how the "intern" had known how to manipulate Connor so well, and how as "Tanya" she had deceived them so well. An assassin, trained specifically to kill the ARC team.

Becker saw a clock and a calendar on the wall. Huh. It had been almost twenty-four hours since his injury, and he was still alive. His injured leg felt like it was in a cast.

He was restrained on a hospital bed. Easy to escape; he slipped his right wrist out with a twist and a soft grunt of pain, and deftly unstrapped his left as he sat up. IV tubes in his arms, leg, and abdomen. Ouch.

He considered the situation as he carefully removed the IV tubes and grabbed some Band-Aids from the cute little bedside table. He recognized the room; the ARC's on-site infirmary.

So. Alive. If April had been telling the truth about that creature—and Becker was quite sure that she had been, he'd had close to a decade of experience reading people—then he should be dead.

There was someone else on the other side of the curtain on his right. It was the woman, the mutant from Scotland. One of her arms was swathed in bandages and strapped to her side. The other was chained to the bed, as were her legs. She had several additional IVs sticking out of her arm.

She was, Becker had to admit, beautiful, in a feral, feline sort of way. Her upper canines were flattened, curved weapons, about seven or eight centimeters long, projecting down the sides of her slight snout. Her nose was protruding, hawkish, and her ears feline and pointed. Her hair was an unruly mane, and her eyes almost disturbingly large. Her jaw, a massive, muscular affair, had some sort of bony projections that the fangs rested against—some sort of shock absorber, to help protect against impacts?

The woman's eyes snapped open. They were large but round-pupiled. Brown and keen. She looked him over with a cursory glance. Then she opened her mouth.

"Agent Sabertooth, civilian specialist, A52-GMHX-7. Tell your boss that's all you're getting, flunky."

Her voice was gravely and oddly harmonized. It sounded almost like she was a parrot, making the noises from her throat alone. Her lips barely moved.

"My name is Captain Hilary Becker. I'm with the Anomaly Research Centre. British government. I'm chief of security. An assassin is attacking my team, and I think that she's even less human than you are. I need your help."

She scrutinized him.

"Great," she muttered. "You're being honest."

"Of course. Why the hell would I lie?" He found the key to the chains' padlock under a glass of water on the table. Screams and EMD fire were still audible, mixed with the staccato of live rounds.

"Oh, I dunno, maybe because you're really a Concordium flunky and April's your supervisor? Although that doesn't make sense, she would've at least tortured me a little. And who sends a flunky to lie to an augment with sensory upgrades like mine? I mean, you're a soldier, not an infiltrator—oh, thanks."

"No problem."

"Heh, that practically proves that you're not with the Concordium. April would've used spiked chains. She'd think it was cute to see me tear apart my own arms and legs trying to escape. Speaking of—holy shit."

"What?"

"My fleshreaver bite. Holy—how the hell am I still alive? There's no cure for fleshreaver bacteria!"

"I don't know, but I assume Connor came up with something. Man's a genius, on a good day. Can you shoot?"

"Not very well. I handle strikers—future bat monsters, fast, vicious, they see sound—mostly. Melee combat's more my thing."

"You kill future predators with your bare hands?"

"I was designed for it. Genetic augmentation. That's why I look like a hybrid of the Terminator and a smilodon, with boobs." After a moment, she added: "The latter are because I'm a chick, of course."

"Thanks for that image, I need to bleach my brain now. Can you use your good arm to support me so I can aim? And does your codename…"

"Actually, it was randomly-selected. Ian insisted that we get codenames. He's a nerd. Yeah, I can support you. You a good shot?"

"Best in my unit."

"Kandahar?"

"Yeah. Special Forces. I have to say, I prefer Taliban to dinosaurs. Oh, good, spare charge pack."

"That dinky little Shocker is barely going to slow April down, you know that, right?"

"What, this EMD? It can take down a rex with one shot."

"Bullshit."

"I've used it myself on an allosaur, about three months back."

"Bullshit. We don't have anything even _close_ to that in power!"

"Well, Matt designed the originals, and Connor built the new upgrades. And Connor's brilliant, on a good day."

"Wait—Connor Temple?"

"Yeah. How do you know him?"

"He's Ian's idol. Ian Wilson, our team nerd. Paleontologist with some physics and genetics training. He'll be delighted, he's absolutely certain that the great Connor Temple, who theorized that all life-forms on Earth are descended from alien bacteria, must be alive somewhere. Man's like a damn conspiracy theorist where Connor Temple is involved."

"Ian Wilson? Isn't he dead? Connor was crying a few months ago saying that "the guy who revised enatornithine taxonomy" went off a cliff in China."

"We faked our deaths. Seriously, you ever try to live an ordinary life with augments?"

"Nah. From what I've seen of you, though, I wouldn't pass up the chance."

"Heh. Well, it takes a month in a drug-induced coma, because the alternative is being sick as a dog for a week and then being in excruciating pain for the next three and a half or so while your body realigns itself. And you need monthly cancer screenings because we're still not sure about our tech. Ready?"

"Let's kick some ass."

"Eloquent," said Villette sarcastically, and kicked the door down with one feline leg. "Now set that thing to max. April once resisted an electric pulse that fried a kaprosuchid like chicken with no apparent ill effects."

"What the hell is this woman, anyway? And what the hell are you?"

"Genetically and physically augmented superassassin. If you guys have drawn her attention, it's almost a good thing. Means that you're pissing off the right people. I'm an augment; genetically augmented with some modified sabertooth DNA and a few extra bits and pieces. For whatever reason, the Twelve are still stronger, faster, and tougher than we are. So keep your distance, because she can kill me in a few seconds."

"Good to know. So. You're American, eh?"

"CIA. Area 52 High-Security Operations Division."

"What about Area 51?"

"Oh, that old place? They used it in the sixties to test experimental aircraft and spacecraft. We've got a creature containment facility in one of the sub-levels now, but it's mostly the bullshit department."

"Misinformation. Smart."

They turned a corner. There were now EMD blasts, feral snarls, shouts, and screams audible. Becker knew the layout like the back of his hand; they were three corridors over from Ops. This was taking too damn long.

"Right. You lean on my shoulder, get off that injured leg. I hope that your sniper skills are as good as you say; you basically need to shoot her in the eye to knock her out."

"Eyes? Oh, optic nerves."

"Exactly. If that weapon's as powerful as you say, the heart might work, too, but it's insulated by her skeleton, suit, and…equipment."

"Got it. Eyes, heart."

The woman had a weird, almost hopping gait, which made three-legged walking difficult. Becker wasn't complaining, though—at least this way he was ready to take a shot.

The alternative, of course, being a dead man walking.

**So that's part one of the epic climax. I'm going to try to update this more quickly, and get on to the next few stories; I have some great ideas for the next "episode" in particular. And I've been working on a Final Epic Showdown to round off the "season". **

**Next update will focus more on Matt, Emily, and Agent Raven going after the eagle. **

**In case you're wondering, yes, the "brunette" that April stands next to in the lift is an augment. Her name is Joan, and she was designed as an infiltrator and field scout unit. The Americans' plan is undergoing…field modifications. Which is basically code for "making it up as they go along", something the ARC team should be familiar with at this point. **

**Up next: A freaking-out killer eagle, a winged augment, some revelations, and badassery. Lots of badassery. Mostly from Becker, because you do NOT hurt Becker's people on his watch. **

**Important note: British EMD weapons are considerably stronger than American Shocker weapons, although they work on the same principle. For large animals, the Americans use the Shockers as cattle prods, and use tranqs if necessary. Also, since they have no locking devices, the Americans prefer to post a large guard on anomaly sites while other agents chase down the creature[s]. **

**No, the Americans are not using future tech, any more than the ARC is. They took some inspiration from future tech, yes. But they don't use it directly. **

**April is considerably more powerful than a baseline human; the ARC and its security staff is a game to her. However, multiple augments with knowledge of her weaknesses are a significant threat, as is a marksman like Becker with an EMD. She's enjoying herself right now (sadistic psychopath), but I guarantee that she won't be having so much fun by the end of the "episode". **


End file.
